Sharon Di
Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
Dr. Xuan (Sharon) Di is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University in the City of New York, and co-chairs the Smart Cities Center in the Data Science Institute.
Dr. Di directs the DitecT (Data and innovative technology-driven Transportation) Lab, focusing on transportation systems. Her overarching research mission is to empower mobility for all, emphasizing the use of technology for social good. She is currently focused on pioneering the development of digital twins for urban transportation management, leveraging cyber-physical systems technology. Within this framework, her research spans diverse areas, including multi-modal mobility optimization, autonomous vehicle control on shared roads with humans, and the intersection of transportation with health considerations.
Research Areas
- Transportation Engineering
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
- Causal Inference
- Game Theory
- Optimization
- Urban Logistics
- Law of Autonomous Driving
- Public Health and Transportation
Additional Information
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Professional Experience
- Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University, 2016–2020
- Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University, 2020–
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Professional Affiliations
- IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS)
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE)
- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
- Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS)
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Honors & Awards
- Winner of International Data Corporation’s Smart Cities North America Awards, 2023
- Best Paper Award, ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Urban Computing (UrbComp), 2022
- Transportation Science Meritorious Service Award (INFORMS), 2022
- Visiting research fellow at Bielefeld University, Germany, 2021-2023
- National Science Foundation, CAREER Award, 2020
- Amazon AWS Machine Learning Research Award, 2020
- Transportation Data Analytics Contest Winner, Transportation Research Board (TRB), 2017
- Dafermos Best Paper Award Honorable Mention, TRB Network Modeling Committee, 2017
- Chan Wui & Yunyin Rising Star Workshop Fellowship for Early Career Professionals, TRB (only 6 fellows were selected internationally), 2016
- ITS SIG Outstanding Presentation Award, INFORMS, 2013
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Education
- PhD, Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
- BS, Civil Engineering, Tongji University